Here is the transcript of an interview with former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about the night Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs. The interview was conducted by Julia Prodis Sulek of the San Jose Mercury News in the walnut orchard of Panetta's Carmel Valley ranch on Feb. 25, the day before his successor, Chuck Hagel, was confirmed.

Sulek: You have said that there was no torture done on your watch.

Panetta: No, the torture took place in the early 2000s, soon after, well, after 9/11. They basically at that time authorized what are called enhanced interrogation methods, and they then used those methods on some of those prisoners that were located at some of the sites overseas. When Obama came in, by executive order, he basically got rid of all enhanced interrogation procedures. So, as director of the CIA, we never used any of that.

Sulek: Can you tell me about the night Osama bin Laden was killed and how you watched that all unfold? Tell me your feelings when you heard the end result.

Panetta: There's a great photograph that I have of my deputy director, Mike Morell, who is actually the acting director now, and I with our arms around each other at the moment the helicopters all returned to Jalalabad in Afghanistan -- which meant at that point we knew that we were OK and that we'd gotten the mission. But it was, you know, mainly because we never had 100 percent confidence that it was bin Laden. We had a lot of intelligence that indicated that. We had the fact that they were his couriers and other pieces of intelligence that kind of indicated, I think by a process of elimination, that it really couldn't be anybody else. At least it certainly led to that. But as I said, we never had 100 percent. And that made it very risky as an operation to basically go 350 miles into Pakistan and conduct an operation with special forces. The biggest concern was we didn't know what the Pakistanis would do and whether or not we'd suddenly wind up having a gunfight there at the compound. That really raised the most concerns.

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But I always had a test -- throughout my political career -- which was to ask the average citizen, "What would you do knowing what I know?" And I really felt that if the average citizen knew that this was probably the best shot we had at getting bin Laden that they would say "Do it." I remember saying exactly that to the president. And ultimately the president, to his credit, made the same decision.

The operation was under the CIA's control, so we had to set up an operations room at Langley. We basically ran the operation from there. There were, as you know, some very tense moments. But when we got the code word "Geronimo," we knew that all the work, all the years of effort, were paying off.

Sulek: That word "Geronimo" came at what point?

Panetta: It was after we knew that they had gone into the main compound -- and it was a period of 20 or 25 minutes of silence where we didn't know exactly what they had found. The guy who was the head of special forces, Admiral (William Harry) McRaven, who was operating I think out of Jalalabad, basically said, "I think we have the code word 'Geronimo.' " But we didn't have confidence. And then, within a few minutes, they confirmed it.

Sulek: What was that 20 to 25 minutes like?

Panetta: It was probably the tensest time I've gone through throughout my career in politics because that 20 minutes was obviously the difference between success and failure. And if by chance he wasn't there, then obviously we were in a situation where I had basically directed the special forces. I said, "Get in. Go in. Find bin Laden. Capture if you can. Do what you have to do to get him and then get out of there." And I said, "If you go in and you don't find bin Laden, get the hell out of there." Either way I wanted them in and out as fast as they could.